


Sense of Purpose

by coolbreezemage



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:21:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28816983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coolbreezemage/pseuds/coolbreezemage
Summary: Saru and Tilly study the logs of Captain Janeway and the USS Voyager in hopes of finding some advice to help their crew cope with their cosmic dislocation.
Relationships: Saru & Sylvia Tilly
Comments: 14
Kudos: 22





	Sense of Purpose

Saru paced his ready room as a centuries-ago human’s voice issued from the computer. 

> _Captain Kathryn Janeway, Personal Log, Stardate 48546.2. Our journey home is several weeks old now, and I have begun to notice in my crew and in myself a subtle change as the reality of our situation settles in._

He sighed. “Computer, pause playback.” 

The ancient recording halted obligingly. Well, ancient only as of the current time. Had they never made their fateful jump, Saru might have died long before this woman was born. 

It was not an exact comparison, of course. Nothing could compare to what the crew of the Discovery had done. Saru hoped they knew how proud he was of them all. But _Voyager’s_ famous journey home was the closest he could find in the extensive archives of Starfleet captains of old. He might not have found it at all if it had not been for the Sphere consciousness nudging his search in the right direction. 

So he knew there was something it intended him to learn from this. But that curious voice had retreated into Discovery’s systems yet again, and would not emerge at his request. Saru respected that. He would not demand it obey him, not after it had gifted him the secret that had saved his race from eons of servitude. 

Kaminar, now part of the Federation. Words could not express his joy. 

He shook his head. “Resume.”

> _Here in the Delta Quadrant, we are virtually the entire family of man. We are more than a crew and I must find a way to be more than a captain to these people, but it's not clear to me exactly how to begin._

He sympathized with her. Though he would never admit it to the crew and risk damaging their resolve with his own doubts, at times he felt nearly as lost as he had his first few days at the Academy, attending there not as a student but as a pre-warp refugee needing to be trained in the very basics of Federation life. 

Determined to earn their respect, to prove his worth despite his lowly origins, he’d studied and studied until his head ached with it all, learned their languages too, even when the Universal Translator embedded in every device rendered such barriers immaterial. 

There was simply so much to learn. Then, and again now. Part of him leapt with curiosity at the chance to know things he could never have dreamed of before their jump. Yet another part stood daunted at just how large that library had grown. 

It did not matter. He could not hope to know it all. Even those who were born to this time would not strive for that perfection. But he hoped to take on something at least. Enough that he would not seem like an ignorant child before the learned Captains and Admirals of the Federation’s decimated fleet. 

Was it fear that drove him to this, or pride? The Admiral had not been willing to listen to them on the basis of _Discovery’s_ abilities alone. They’d had to prove themselves trustworthy, and even that had been a near thing, almost ruined a dozen times along the way. 

He thought of his sister scolding him for always reaching for those things that hung out of reach. Thought of her at the helm of a ship. What had her life been after that, after she believed him dead for a second and final time? Had she continued to fly? Raised a family? Worked for peace? 

_Forgive me, Siranna, for leaving you behind,_ he thought, throat aching with a familiar song.

The door chimed. He shook himself back to the present.

“Come in.” He dismissed the Voyager recording with a wave of a hand.

Ensign Tilly entered, carrying a tray. “Captain.”

He studied her. Their scheduled meeting wasn’t due for an hour and a half, and Saru knew he hadn’t lost track of time badly enough to miss that. “Ensign. Is there a problem?”

Tilly shook her head. “Oh, no, Nilsson says everything’s good on the Bridge. It’s just that I finished the reports early, so I thought I’d bring them over. And some dinner.”

That, Saru knew, wasn’t part of her engineering duties or her command training. 

“I thank you,” he said, still a little puzzled. “But I do have a replicator, as you might recall.” He nodded towards the device built into the far wall. Those were some of the crew’s favorites of the multitude of new additions to their ship.

“Yeah, but I checked the logs, and it says you haven’t eaten anything since alpha shift, so…” She shrugged and set down the tray. He could smell salted tide-herb tea and roasted spotted-shells, along with some Earth dish he didn’t immediately recognize. “I hope you like it. I asked the computer for suggestions because I don’t know much about Kelpien food.“

“It looks very agreeable, thank you.” He sipped from the mug and found his suspicions true - she’d prepared it perfectly, even without using his presets. 

She smiled. “Good. So what were you listening to?”

“Ensign?”

“When I came in. The file. It looked like a historical record.” She hesitated. “I mean, it might be classified. You don’t need to tell me if it’s classified. Or at all, really. Forget I asked.”

“It is not classified,” he said. “It’s an account of the USS Voyager, which went missing in 2371.” He brought the record up again. A holo of the ancient ship floated between them, a list of dates growing long underneath it. “It recontacted Starfleet several years later and reported having been thrown deep into the Delta Quadrant by a mysterious alien force. They had been transported over seventy thousand lightyears from home in an instant, with no way back.” 

Tilly’s eyes went wide. “Huh. I bet they wished they’d had a spore drive.”

Saru nodded. “Indeed. As it was, it took them over seven years to return home, aided by multiple subspace phenomena. Without that help, they would have been likely stranded for-”

“Somewhere around seventy-five years,” Tilly finished, and then ducked her head. “Sorry, sir. I was just calculating that at the warp speeds they’d have had then-“

“You are correct,” Saru said. Once, he would not have tolerated such interruptions. Now, he had learned to accept them, to some extent. A degree of flexibility could serve one well in command relationships, he had learned. And he found he would not mind knowing more about her, not at all. 

She waved one of the programmable-matter chairs into existence and sat. That was something Saru was still getting used to himself. Sometimes it was difficult to trust that the objects were real and wouldn’t collapse at the wrong moment. 

He leaned forward, studying the yellowish curls in her bowl. “If I may ask, what are you eating?”

“Oh, this? It’s just mac and cheese. It’s usually a kids’ thing but I kinda felt like it today, you know?” 

He didn’t quite follow, but he knew what it was to crave the things of childhood. “You are… homesick?”

She shrugged. “Kinda. Not that I miss home, because home was pretty awful,” and that was another of the things she said seemingly without thinking that made him worry so for her - “but there are some little things that I do miss sometimes.”

That was a very familiar feeling. “I believe I understand you.” 

Tilly picked her fork up and then abruptly put it down again. “Oh, wait, the reports.”

“The reports can wait,” Saru said, gesturing for her to relax. “Let us enjoy the meal first.” 

She smiled. “Good idea.” She dug into the dish with relish. “Mmm, the new replicators are so much better than what we had before. This used to taste like cheesy cardboard.”

“I agree.” Tasting dishes from his homeworld once again was a pleasure he hoped he’d never take for granted.

It was gratifying to see Tilly growing more comfortable around him. He knew his stature and stark face tended to intimidate other species. For all her nervous energy - something he understood quite well himself - she had proven herself resilient under pressure time and time again. With the range of situations that Admiral Vance might call upon them to attend at any moment, it was a very useful trait indeed, and one he’d nurtured in all his crew. 

“Did you find anything in the Voyager logs?” Tilly asked.

He shook his head. “No. I have only just started looking.”

She chewed thoughtfully on her meal. “I could help, if you want. Seven years sounds like a lot of logs to go through. What are you looking for?”

Her question forced him to think about his own motivations behind studying the logs. Was it to study the ways in which a starship crew had weathered similar dislocation? Or was it to find direction for himself as a captain? He was no longer foolish enough to attempt to compare himself to the best. He only wished to be what his crew - and the shattered Federation - needed. 

“Advice, mainly,” he admitted. “Captain Janeway’s situation was in many ways not unlike our own.“

Her eyes brightened. “Now I’m curious. I saw a Voyager at HQ but I didn’t know it had a backstory like that.”

“You do not need to trouble yourself. Consider it a… personal project.” He saw her face fall ever so slightly in disappointment. “But the files should be publicly available if you are so inclined,” he amended.

“I’ll take a look. That must be an amazing story.” 

* * *

True to her word, Tilly returned a few days later with a collection of bookmarks from the _Voyager_ files. 

“I don’t know what I would have done if I was on that ship,” she said, rolling her coffee cup between her hands. “Torn away from everything you ever knew in a moment, surrounded by enemies, working with people like the Maquis?” She shook her head. “It sounds like something out of a holomovie.”

“You would have adapted, and served well,” Saru said, with absolute certainty.

Tilly blushed at the praise. “I probably could…” she said. “And- and I know you made us all say it, but I think you need to remember too. We all knew what we were signing up for. We all made a choice to come here. To follow Michael.” 

“ _Voyager_ had no such choice,” Saru said. “It is incredible that they achieved what they did.”

There were adventures aplenty in the files, some heartwarming, some tragic, some chilling. 

The reports on the Hirogen hunters made Saru shiver with the memory of living with death always so close at hand. And with the knowledge that his own people had played both roles, hunter and prey, over their long, once-forgotten history. He wondered what had become of the Hirogen and the races they pursued after Voyager flew far beyond their reach. He wondered how the Kelpiens and Ba’ul lived today.

“One thing I have found,” Saru said, trying to chase away those thoughts, “is that even when they might have made more progress on their journey by continuing onward, they always stopped to help those in need, even if it took them well off their planned course.”

Tilly smiled. “Well, that’s not surprising. They were Starfleet. You’d do the same thing. I mean, we’re already doing that.”

Her regard meant more to him than he had anticipated. 

“So we do,” he said. 

He pulled up another log, this one about an encounter with a strange species from another dimension and the rehabilitation of a Borg drone. It was a lengthy one, a long series of reports and disagreements and scanner logs and medical files. Captain Janeway’s recordings linked it all together, revealing both doubt and determination. One line in particular stood out to him.

> _I won’t allow fear to undermine this crew’s sense of purpose, even if that fear is justified._

The _Discovery_ had indeed found a purpose here, Saru thought. Half a galaxy and many centuries separated _Discovery_ and _Voyager,_ and yet in some ways they faced much the same troubles. They had both traveled far from home in the line of duty and both emerged into a fragile world threatened by fear, greed, and distance. A world populated by people who might provide aid or danger, who might plead for help or be too afraid or proud to ask. 

Unlike _Voyager_ , _Discovery_ was not wholly alone. The remnants of the Federation reached out for contact. They only needed a messenger. A hope. A reason to trust. 

But the lessons of Voyager remained. They would make new friends here, build new alliances. And the bonds they shared as a crew were the most important of all, and would be the foundation of all the rest. 

Saru looked up from the recording to find Tilly curled into her chair, not quite asleep, but very close to it. He thought of letting her stay, of darkening the room and calling up blankets from the waiting programmable matter, but he dismissed that idea. It would not be appropriate. 

Instead he put a hand on her shoulder, waited for her to rouse. Hoping the gesture wasn't too familiar.

Her eyes opened. “Ugh. Sorry, Captain. Did I miss anything?”

“You should rest,” he said. “I apologize; I had no intention of keeping you so long.”

She sat up and stretched, brushing curls out of her face. “You should rest too, you know.”

He tilted his head. “I will be fine.”

Tilly looked him over, unconvinced. “You said that while you were dying, too.”

He gave an amused click. “And as you will remember, I survived.” 

“Yeah, after scaring the heck out of us.” The words were light, but the meaning behind them no less firm.

He lowered his head. “I will count myself appropriately chastened.” 

Tilly laughed. “You have to let us worry about you, Captain. That’s just how it works.”

“So I see. Well, if you will let me do the same in return, then I will gladly accept.”

“That’s a deal.” She grinned. “You can’t go back on it now.”

Saru didn’t plan to.

**Author's Note:**

> Janeway quotes taken from The Cloud and Scorpion. 
> 
> I started a Discovery Discord server for character and fanfic discussions: https://discord.gg/3aGtrDynqK


End file.
